and this is how they end
by AdorableLittleWriter
Summary: (and maybe this is how they begin.) –– A write-out; Joker and his gang. Reincarnation AU, sort of.


_**[Time started: Nov 27, 12.37am; –]**_

** Because its 12.30am in the morning and I've just finished marathon-ing all ten episodes of Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus wheeee **

** I HAVE A LOT OF FEELS ABOUT JOKER AND HIS GANG OKAY I JUST WANT THEM TO BE TOGETHER AND HAPPY **_**/gross sobbing/**_

** Disclaimer: None of the characters in Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus belongs to me. All rights reserved to their respective owners. **

** Please rate and review!**

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><p><strong>Title:<strong> and this is how they end

**Summary:** (and maybe this is how they begin.) –– A write-out; Joker and his gang. Reincarnation AU, sort of.

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–_one; _

_Joker–_

He doesn't even die with the sun on his face.

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–_two;_

_Jumbo– _

He can feel his head bleeding, his head hurting. Jumbo tilts his head to the sky and shouts, all bloodied desperation and fear in the night, "Peter, Wendy, run! This mansion isn't normal!" Around him, the ground runs red with his blood.

That's all he ever gets out before he dies against the stonewalls.

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–_three;_

_Peter, Wendy– _

Rage makes them run, and soon they are flashing through the night, deadly-delicate dolls flying on silver strings crisscrossing and swinging across the mansion.

They are angry. Their anger twists their faces into harsh ugly things, the expressions disconcertingly adult-like on their pale pixie faces.

Behind them, they hear the sounds of Finnian's footsteps over the crash of the tree he'd just punched down, and they sped up, arcing over the mansion towers and to beyond, landing neatly on the steps, true trapeze artists in motion.

"What is he, a monster?!" Wendy yells, incredulous, when Finnian punches a hole through the wall as easily as he'd punch through a paper screen. Finnian is a maniac, chanting about love and protection and about this creepy Phantomhive mansion that he says he loves, and his turquoise eyes are wide and relentless and pupil-less as he runs after Peter and Wendy on the steps. A child-like boy, with the strength of a thousand men.

"He's slower than we are, though!" Peter shouts back, and together Peter and Wendy fire their retractable wires up in the air, and sail through the night.

They are on the roof now, and they jump down to meet Finnian head-on, silver wire a taut tight line between them, sharp-deadly and intended to kill. (Just like them, just like them, just _like them._) In the air they feel invincible; they are a team, Peter-and-Wendy and Wendy-and-Peter, and together they could get through this, they _could._

(But then Wendy is shot through the head by Mey-Rin on the roof, and barely twenty minutes later, so is Peter. Neither really lives to tell the tale, and the worst part is, they didn't even die together.)

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–_four;_

_Dagger–_

He is with Beast, beautiful beautiful Beast, when they run through the mansion and meets Bard in their search for the important Phantomhive boy. Despite the obvious danger of their current mission, Dagger glances at Beast every so often as they run and make their way quickly around the mansion.

Her thick dark curls whips around her face as she runs, the ends ghosting at the milky pale white nape of her neck as her dark eyes narrow forward in concentration, and god, Dagger loves her.

He loves her even as they run for their lives away from the chef and the crazy maid with the guns and the gardener with the strength that wasn't even human, and he loves her even as they search for the Phantomhive boy but only end up in the kitchen where the chef and his mother_fucking _war machine (_–_ where the hell did he even get that?!) was.

He loves her even as the chef starts shooting at them with the artillery and he dives in front of Beast to save her – because Beast was Beast, and Dagger was Dagger, and first and foremost Dagger had always loved Beast.

Because Dagger knows things, and he's seen the way Beast looks at Joker when she thinks that Joker isn't looking. Beast has looked anxious and upset, recently, since Joker had left for Father's house, and Dagger thinks it might be because Joker was gone. Dagger gets that. Dagger gets how worrying it might be when the person you loved most was away out of your sight.

So he holds Beast close to him for just about one last time as he feels the different bullets burrow themselves into his back like the sharp bite of his knives hitting circus board, and he thinks maybe this might be worth it, in the end. The gunfire noises around them quiets, and he gazes up with hazy eyes to see Beast hovering over him with a face twisted in pain and worry.

Dagger smiles, feeling a bubble of blood pop in the inside of his mouth. "Thank goodness… You're alright… Run… Tell Joker…" He reaches out weakly, lays a hand on Beast's forearm. Beast starts, before tears spill from her eyes and splashes onto Dagger's face.

"Why? Why would you do that for me?"

Dagger closes his eyes, and feels the droplets of water on his face slide down the side of his cheek in a cool gentle arc, like someone tracing a finger gently across his face. "Miss…" He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he realises that he is crying.

"I wanted to take you… over the hill…"

Dagger dies in Beast's arms.

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–_five; _

_Beast–_

Dagger dies, and Beast screams into the sky and wants to rip the Phantomhive mansion's chef's throat out. He is standing to the side, rough grin curling over his face, cigarette smoking thinly in the night.

"I'd rather have met a pretty girl like you in a pub over some warm beer."

Beast flashes up, all vicious fury and howling grief. "I'll make you pay!" She snarls, the sound of her weapon whip cracking in the air ugly and sharp.

She lashes out at him, but he is a viper, dodging quick and easy that only a man who has looked war in the face could. She destroys tables, kitchen equipment, countless bags of food and flour, so much flour that the air is thick with it, the powder choking everywhere and obscuring Beast's vision.

By the time it clears, Beast sees that the chef is nowhere to be seen. He's escaped through the hole in the wall, and was now standing over her as the flour powder swirled and attempted to settle.

He holds out a matchstick and strikes it against his boot. A flame flared, and it looked like a beacon through all the flour. Beast's eyes widen. She realises.

The flames drop towards her direction.

_Joker… _

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–_six;_

_Doll (the [un]luckiest of them all)–_

She sees the mansion in flames like a stinging scarlet bloodied-warning in the night, and the vicious fires were warm on her face and everywhere on the house as she stares at the mansion in front of her with wide, wide eyes.

She doesn't dare to blink; blinking would make the scene in front her true, and Doll doesn't want to make it true, because god, it couldn't be, it couldn't be it couldn't be _it couldn't be. _

Joker was supposed to be in that house. And so was Father.

Through the hazy tears in her eyes, Doll can make out a silhouette coming out of the burning building. Hope flutters in her chest as bright as a white bird; maybe Joker and Father had survived, after all, and here they were coming out alive.

But who walks out are Smile and Black, and though Doll doesn't believe it at first, Smile is Ciel Phantomhive, Black is his butler, and Joker and Father were dead in the burning building ablaze in front of him.

Doll can feel her world being ripped apart at the seams. The world spins around her, harsh and confusing and nauseating, and Doll thinks she's gasping for air to fill her lungs, she was crying so hard. And then she is angry, suddenly, and she charges up at Smil- _Ciel_, with tears falling crisp-cold down her cheeks like mourning and blurring her vision and with a dagger clutched tight in her hands.

She doesn't get to Ciel, and in the end is left sobbing in front of a flaming, dying house.

She stays until the house is burned to the ground and nothing of it was left.

(She learns later, when she searches for the others, that they'd all died too, whilst infiltrating the Phantomhive mansion searching for the Phantomhive boy. Doll laughs so hard she cries, after she hears the news. Smile was such a curse. And Smile had gotten to her too; he left her the only one of them alive, and that itself was a cruelty almost worse than death. Doll later hears that Snake has gone to work for Ciel, too.

Doll hasn't got anything left.)

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_replay over. fin?_

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The world is black. He breathes in.

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_("Do we get our second chance?"_

"_Yes. Now close your eyes.")_

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He breathes out.

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–_start?_

_start. _

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Joker buys a cup of overly-sweetened coffee from the Starbucks counter, and pays for it with a credit card. His scarf flaps around him as he turns around, and Joker calls back a "thank you!" with an easygoing grin and flashing smile as he jogs towards a cluster of tables not far from the counter. It was 2014, in Chicago, winter.

There were six other people seated at the table, and Joker grins at them as wide as the whole sun.

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><p><strong>The lines Joker and his gang speak here are the ones I stole off the English subbed version I watched. I can't understand Japanese so I don't really know how accurate it is.<strong>

** Did anybody else cry when all of them died and Doll was left alone because I **_**damn well did.**_

** What do you guys think? I tried playing around with form with this piece. It was supposed to be epic long but I got uninspired. This was a writing-out of the episode where they died, basically, with a reincarnation ending tacked to the end because **_**damniT THEY DESERVE TO BE HAPPY.**_

** Please rate and review! Please tell me what you thought of this story; I'd love to hear it :)**

_**[Time ended: Dec 22, 2.35am; –]**_


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